ROCHESTER— With results in from Ward 2 and 3 in the Lilac City, Democrat candidate David Miller has beat out Republican Cliff Newton for the newly available District 23 state representative seat.

Incumbent candidate Julie Brown, who ran in the Republican primary, lost to Newton by a large majority in September. She had previously held the seat for more than two decades.

Ward 2 results indicated Miller received 1,214 votes over Newton’s 1,128. In Ward 3, results showed Miller with 1,175 votes and Newton with 1,158 in a close match.

Miller, 70, a retired educator, is a former president of the Rochester Historical Society and involved in the Rochester Alumni Association. He has lived in Ward 2 of Rochester since 2000. Miller said he is in favor of bolstering public education and supports environmental causes, adding his dream in 20 years is for children to find horseshoe crabs all over the local beaches, because that would show “we cared enough to make the difficult but correct choices today to protect our earthly domain.”

Miller previously told Foster’s he believes job creation will be a major focus in the election. Reflecting on his recent win this week, Miller said he knocked on about 1,000 doors in the Gonic area.

For the future, he said he hopes to fight cuts to education and other services,and referred to his time as an educator in the Mascoma school district outside Hanover.

“I think that we’ve got to continue to work on strengthening public education,” he said. “I had a big panel on the side of my truck that said cutting public education makes us all dumber than a fifth grader … and I think that that’s one of those important issues. It always has been for me … teacher energy only carries you so far. You do need money.”

He stressed he is interested in bolstering education without increasing taxes and would like to review other revenue streams for consideration.